Mobile apps

Platform stats for the UKWe’re recruiting a Product Manager for our team, and this week we’ve been doing some interviews. One of the recurrent topics in those interviews has been mobile apps.

The usual response from the candidate was: Why would you need a mobile app? What do you need from the device that pure web couldn’t provide? The usual candidate response was shared with many (most) of my colleagues in the team.

From my perspective that is a wrong approach. In my opinion, a more rational approach should be: Absolutely. Mobile is the Internet. There are no Colour TV but just TVs. And probably, in a not too far future, your mobile will be your computer. Now let’s discuss how we provide that mobile experience.

Yes, you can provide that mobile experience with a responsive webapp, with a personalised mobile site, with a hybrid Apache Cordova native app, with a hybrid ReactNative app, or with a pure native app. Each has its pros and cons.

What you can no longer do is create a “responsive” desktop site and test it in mobile. Not only because you usually discover that iPhone has its quirks and Android web scrolling is simply awful.

But because the whole experience is different.

And because in the UK on average, 2 in 5 users come today from non-desktop (mobile/tablet)